


A charm of powerful trouble

by Kit



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gift Fic, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-29
Updated: 2013-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 06:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Tyler needs a job. Mels needs to get out of Leadworth. It's 2005. What could possibly happen?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Rose

**Author's Note:**

> Title snatched up from Joanne Horniman's novel of the same name.

**_A charm of powerful trouble_ **

* * *

 

 _2005_  
  
There is nothing worse than two people who have just worked out they’re in love with each other. People who are mad for it; all hands and mouths and the sort of long, mortifying stares that could only be broken by bits of themselves in each other’s pants. Nothing helps here. Even if every grand declaration or gormless smile proves that you were, in fact, right.     
  
Leadworth was small. It hadn’t taken Mels long to realise that a Leadworth where her best mates were shagging each other senseless was _officially_ too small. There were books about that sort of trauma.  
  
And everyone, Mels reasoned, needed a holiday from their parents, no matter how much she loved them.London might be big enough for her. At least for now.

***

Henricke’s emporium (“All The Clothes You Don’t Know You Need!”) was the sort of place that saved its finery for up the front. The staff areas were tatty and unwelcoming, and Rose Tyler shifted uncomfortably in the plastic chair left out by the manager’s office, where Stella waited. Smiling, probably. Stella Parsons had gone to school with Rose’s mum, but seemed to forget she’d ever been anything other than a middle manager, responsible for the future of all the girls that had left A Levels for blokes or fame or other fragile things, and then felt superior to them. And Rose _really needed_ the job. She twisted in the chair.  
  
The door was flung open, someone’s laugh spilling out of along with a fresh burst of florescent light.  “You know, Stel,” the voice said, bright and young and just a little too loud. “You’re right. I don’t think I’m suited for this line of work. But that doesn’t stop you from being an evil hag,” There was a brief pause, and Rose watched as a slight, grinning figure, with the most amazing boots she had ever seen, eased her way out the door. She turned, giving an obnoxious little wave.  
  
“Thank you _so_ much for your time. Call me, yeah?”    
  
Rose stared.  
  
The girl looked down at her, eyebrows raised as dark, thin braids fell  about her face. “Who the hell are you?”  
  
“Er...”  
  
The girl shrugged, shaking her head. “Well, sweets,” she said, voice shifting to a creaky whisper, “Whoever you are, I just got you a job. They’ll take _anyone_ who isn’t me.” She beamed, reaching out—and if this wasn’t the weirdest part of that morning, Rose had no idea—to adjust her headband. The girl’s fingers were deft and fast, careful not to snag her hair. She rocked back on her heels, gaze serious.  
  
“Yes,” she said, apparently satisfied. “Much better. Good luck!” Her smile was back, and blinding even under the over-lit glare of the corridor. “And a tip: don’t look so gormless!”  
  
“I am _not_ gormless.”  
  
“Yeah,” said the girl. “That’s more like it. Catch ya.” Another wave, and she was gone.  
  
“Rose?” Stella’s voice, rather more faint than usual. “Rose Tyler?”  
  
Resisting the urge to check her hair, Rose went inside.

***

There was an art to shoplifting. Shareen would go on for hours about it—all the ways you could get three sets of clothes and a stereo out safely without looking like you were knocked up with a cube. Rose had never been all that interested, even bored stupid in fourth form when even the shinier kids were doing it; she’d hung back with Mickey, who’d never get caught with anything in case it got back to his Gran.  But she knew enough.

She’d seen enough, in her months at Henricke’s. Slick moves. Stupid moves. Daft kids and the real desperates, who made her want to turn away and pretend she was blind.

What Rose saw now was blatant. Blatant and mad. She watched as a girl wandered lazily through every aisle that might be picked up by Rose’s cameras, snatching up random items and managing to slip them under her coat. It didn’t seem to matter where she rifled the items from: a little from lingerie; the obligatory sweets section; _outwear;_ the aisle meant for the sort of middle aged ladies who liked to buy their husbands argyle-on-nylon, or socks printed with kittens. She kept her face away from the cameras, but every move shouted, “Thief!” with the camera picking up it all refusing to form it into any sort of sense.

She was about to go find Stella, or detach Dawn from the awkward customer who kept asking for exchanges, when the careless shoplifter turned her head, looking straight at the camera positioned in the lingerie aisle. Braids. Triumphant expression. Great teeth. Mad, mad eyes. And she _winked._

The girl from Rose’s interview.

***

Her name, apparently, was Mels. She was wearing a fedora.

“I was wondering what I’d have to do to get your attention.”      

Rose pulled a wispy, red Kylie Minogue bra-and-knickers set from her hands. “Are you stupid, or what?” somehow, Rose found she couldn’t keep a laugh out of her voice. She busied herself setting the items back on their shelves. 

“Oh, really? I thought that was genius. Good thing you check those cameras.”

“It’s my _job_.”

Mels only shrugged. “Jobs are hard, Rose Tyler.”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Very mysterious. Oi. I _saw_ that—” she snatched a camisole from Mels’s grasp, seconds before it would disappear—hanger and all—beneath her loud, large-hounds tooth wool coat.

“Can’t help myself. Listen, what are you doing tonight?”

“Not taking you to the police station?”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously, I have no idea.”

Mels smiled. “Then you should introduce me to your mates after your shift ends, and we should have an absolutely ridiculous time.” Laughing at Rose’s narrow-eyed scepticism, she added: “Look, it’s been a _terrible_ week. You know those dates, yeah? The ones you go on for a laugh, or because in a certain light he had kind of a sweet face, and so you go against your instinct that says he’s really just a—”

“—waste of space?”

“I was thinking more like charisma vacuum. Or, well, plastic. Anyway, you go, and then you find yourself stuck for a whole _night_ with Plastic Man, and he doesn’t even pay the bill.”

“Did _you_?”

Mels smirked. “Come on, Rose. I just came by to see if you actually got the job here. I’m still new to London. I could _really_ use a night out.”

“Do you always beg this hard?”

“You bet.” 

Rose looked at the clock. “Well, if you’re still around at the end of my shift. I’ve only got another hour.”

“I promise I won’t distract you,” said Mels, smiling and slipping a lipgloss from the centre display into one pocket. “Much. Just...get on time. It’s important.”

***

Nothing _ever_ just takes an hour.

“Lottery money,” Stella had said, pushing it into Rose’s hands as the lights began their flickering death-throes. “Go find Wilson.”

And so Rose found herself back in Henricke’s grimy back rooms, looking for the one bastard too lazy to pay up.  

 _H. P. Wilson, CEO._ A pale blue door. Silence.

 _Come_ on. _“_ Wilson?”

Her bag was heavy, cutting through the thick fabric of her hoodie, making her think of old school books and back strain. Rose shifted her weight, wincing as the hum of the lights seemed to fill in all the spaces in her thoughts, making her teeth ache and the rest of her itch to be outside.

“Look, I can’t hang about—” Would Mels be there? What would she _do_? “They’re going to close the shop…”

Nothing. Rustling caught at her from a side door. Scowling, she walked towards it. The man was probably doing unspeakable things with mannequins. Trying to shut down that part of her imagination, Rose went through the badly lacquered red doors, calling his name again.

When the doors slammed, a part of her wasn’t even surprised. “Stop trying to mess me about.”

Mannequins. Dummies. Dummies in rejected shirts and faded floral dresses. Long, jointed arms and narrow hips and sharply planed faces that glowed a slick, half melted white. And one of them stepped towards her.

“Okay, you got me.  Very funny—!”

Slam! A scream that was half laughter rose up in her throat. Of course the door was closed _. The door was closed._ Rose ran to it and pulled anyway, because it was that or stay under all those lights and just _watching_. And there were more of them. They creaked as they walked, just the same as when she and the others put clothes on them upstairs and had to move their limbs.

Their moving limbs.

“…whose idea was this?” Rose backed up, straining to see someone human amongst all the mess.  “Was this Derek? Derek, is that you?”

 _Stupid._ There were boxes in her way. Racks and shelves and she _tripped,_ because that was what happened when you were trapped in a basement with zombified plastic. Rose’s thoughts took on Mickey’s voice, the way it was when he thought they were playing video games together and he was really just being a patronising git and laughing as she failed to blow up the right things. She stumbled. A hand snatched hers in the dark, hard and warm and dry. Rose flinched. She felt lips against her ear.

“Run!”

The mannequin’s head exploded. Sound came later, along with the acrid reek of melting plastic. The hand around hers slackened, and she heard a long, low whistle.

***

“You lot are _rubbish_.” The familiar voice was breathless behind its drawl. 

Mels stood before the wreckage, wreathed in smoke. She was balancing a hunting rifle, and Rose, for one mad minute, wondered where on earth she could have hidden it. 

Braids swinging, Mels turned to glare at her. “Go on, get a move on,” she said. “You, too, sweets.”

Rose remembered the other voice. The hand on hers, tightening again even as she tried to pull away. It belonged to a tall man in a black jacket, who was shaking his head as if Mels was a far stranger thing than walking plastic men.

“She’s right,” the man said, looking down at her with a broad, dazzling grin. “Running is still good.”

***

He had them hurting down corridors, through doors that seemed much more agreeable now that he was staring them down. Mels was on her other side, the gun slung over her shoulder, one hand reaching for hers. “Hello again, Rose Tyler,” she said.

“Rose Tyler?” The man looked at her, still grinning. “Good name, Rose Tyler. Who’s your friend?”

Mels smirked. Even while running. “The one with the gun,” she said. 

“The gun filled with _birdshot?”_

“This is from Leadworth. You can’t get any other kind in Leadworth.  I can improvise.”

“Well then, scat! I have this.”

“Not likely, and that was _dire_.” Mels laughed as she kicked out at an oncoming lurcher. The service lift was up ahead.

“You’re both talking over my _head_ , is what you’re both doing,” Rose snapped. A plastic hand reached for her arm, another for Mel’s hair. All three threw themselves at the lift doors. It was a difficult fit, Rose frantically pressing buttons.

The hand shot through the closing doors. Mels grabbed it. The man grabbed Mels. Rose winced something _popped_ and the two of them fell back against her, clutching at a now amputated, and inanimate, limb. The man took it from Mels with another grin, throwing it Rose.

“…you pulled his arm off. Both of you.”

““Plastic,” said the man. 

“ _Rubbish_ ,” said Mels.

“Do I _know_ you?”

“Not a clue, Big Ears.”

Panting, Rose flourished the hand. “So,” she said, loudly. “What was it, then? Was it students?”

“Why do you say that?” The man tilted his head, quizzical.

“Well…to get that many people dressed up and being silly…it’s got to be students.”

“That was a good answer,” he grinned.

“It was the _wrong_ answer,” sighed Mels.

“Oi. It was a _good answer_. Well done, Rose Tyer. Now.” The lift opened, and he shoved the pair of them out the doors. “They’re not students.”

“They’re living plastic--” said Mels.

“—controlled by a relay in the roof, which would be a huge problem, except that—”

“—I’ve got this.” Mels pulled something shiny with brass and full of ominous ticks out of her pocket, just as the other man did the same.

“ _Snap_ ,” she said, faintly.

The man’s face darkened, and he took Mels’s arm. “Right. You’re staying with me and we both might die in the process, but that’s all right. You, Rose, you go on home to your chips and beans and telly and—”

“You’re patronising her, you know.”

“—shut up. Just _run_.” The man pulled Rose back into the warehouse part of the shop, leaving Rose staring at the doors.

A click. The man’s head peered around. “My name’s the Doctor, by the way. Rose Tyler, run for your life.”

Rose ran.

This meant that she did not see the Doctor’s face change, manic grin shifting into surprised rictus, as he felt the barrel of a hunting rifle against his back.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mels hated being told what to do. The voices in her head were no exception. TW for some violence and bleakness.

(“He will have many voices, Melody.”)

Mels knew the voice in her head the way she knew her full name. Deep, but vague and blurred about the edges. It did not fit with Leadworth Mels and her gun full of birdshot, who gave her best mates hell just because she loved the feeling of them all once they were all together again. Her changes—her strange shifts and re-growths and the harsh, coiled energy of her life made it easy to forget things when she wanted to. But this voice? It was soft and insistent and said that this was _it._ This laughing maniac who was now very, very still as she pressed the rifle into his coat was meant to be _gone,_ even if he was nothing like the raggedy man who had bruised Amy’s heart.

(”Your mother doesn’t even know who you are, Melody. Not properly. And that’s _his_ doing. Just like all the rest of it.

“Is this a good idea?” His voice was too loud. It shook, but it was the sort of shaking that came froom keeping a shout locked away, rather than fear. “Don’t get me wrong. Sometimes, I think it might be a _very good idea_ —a _fantastic_ idea. But today isn’t a bad day. It was just getting good. And since we’ve just done a bang-up job of getting this building ready to explode, it’s actually a bit redundant, don’t you think?”

“…How _hasn’t_ someone killed you?” Mels’s breath was all tangled up in her throat, her skin too tight. Everything was right. She just had to shoot him. Shoot him, rid the world (and several thousand others besides) of his interfering menace, and go buy Rose Tyler a drink. Except that it all felt too much like someone was telling her what to do. Mels _hated_ people telling her what to do. The voices in her head were no exception.

(”It’s your task, Melody. …shoot the Doctor dead.”)

“—Lucky boy.”

“What?” (” _SHOOT HIM”)_

“You wanted to know why no one’s done me in yet,” said the Doctor, exasperated. “It’s _because_ I’m a lucky boy. You could at least pay attention, you know.”

“Alien,” said Mels.

“What?”

“You’re at least 11,100 and an alien. Time Lord. Making messes wherever you go.” She smirked, hoping he’d hear the change in her voice. “I _do_ pay attention.”

“I’m _903_ —”

“—and the building’s meant to explode.” Mels closed her eyes, just for a moment—(”N _ever let down your guard, Melody. He will trick you.”) “_ Oh, sod it. Just take me to the Tardis.”

Her eyes wide open again, Mels watched him still. She’d thought him tense before. Now, his body felt more solid than the weight of the rifle in her hand, his fists clenching to white at his sides. “Big old box,” Mels added helpfully. “Bigger on the inside? The sort of blue that needs a Derwent named after it. Good for time travel.”

“I’m more a Faber Castel sort, myself,” he said brightly, shifting to look over his shoulder.

“Oh, you _would--_ ”

“—and no.” He grinned, and it pulled something bright and feral from her own face. “No way.”

She nudged him with the gun. “Yeah,” she said. “You will. You want to know who I am even more than I want to kill you. And I _really_ want to do that.”

“About that,” The Doctor moved, faster than the bulk of him should have allowed, shoving her back and throwing his detonator. “Why _do_ you want to kill me?”

Mels burst out laughing, not trying to regain breath he hadn’t even really taken. She got to her feet, throwing her own device just to keep the weight of the thing from her arm. “I’ve never really been _told_ ,” she said. “Did you know that?” She took up the gun, fired it into the air, and hit him hard across the cheek and jaw with the but of it as he still shuddered from the noise. “Of course you don’t know that.” Sighing, she fished out one of the sillier things she’d nicked from Rose’s floor. The sort of “intimate” handcuffs that had red bows and fur lining—ridiculously flimsy until you realised that you’d lost the tiny, tiny key. Grinning, she slipped one around her own wrist, and the other around his, snorting at the appalled look on his face as it snapped closed.

“These are just _embarrassing,”_ he gasped. A bruise was forming on his cheekbone.

“We both need to run, and I need you with me,” she said, yanking at the bonds. “Lead the hell on, Doctor.”

They ran.

***

Stepping into the Tardis should not have been a shock. Mels _knew._ She knew from Amy’s stories—from her wall scribblings and seven-year-old dress up parties and the year she dropped out of O Level Physics because she just _couldn’t_ build a proper replica, not to _scale_ —that the ceiling would tower and doorways might stretch into passages that could not possibly exist. The console was blinking. That was good. Consoles were meant to blink. It was all terribly silly and terribly beautiful, just as she expected. But there were _words_ everywhere.

Intricate, circular diagrams on the screens seemed to blaze out at her and crack open a door in her head, and the whole place thrummed with: _home; home; mine and home and MINE._ Not her voice at all. Not even the hidden one that was still telling her that she was stupid and useless and doing it all wrong because he should be _dead_ by now. Dead and gone and done. The Tardis made that voice small. It thrummed and settled and reached out around her, even as she stood stock still by the door, with the Doctor turning something that looked like a screwdriver and sounded like a computer after you’d spilled coffee all over it against the small length of chain between them. Slowly, oblivious to the man’s mutterings as the material refused to budge, she walked to the centre, dragging him behind. She did feel him flinch as she laid one hand—the one joined with his--on the console. Lights brightened, taking on warmer tones, and Mels shook her head to hide a smile.

 _“_ You _like_ this person?”

Mels blinked, turning to look at him, cuff tugging at her wrist. “Who are you talking to?”

“Oh, look at that. She doesn’t even know who you are and you still like her. She says she wants to kill me.”

Suddenly, the lights dimmed, and Mels felt her heart twist. _Mine_ , she felt. **_Both_** _of you, mine._

Mels groaned. She was tired. Her feet hurt and her skin felt too hot and tight from the recent explosion. Her clothes and hair reeked of plastic. None of the voices in her head had her voice. “All I wanted,” she said, looking from their joined hands to the gun she still held with her free one, “Was a little bit of Nestene payback and to flirt with a pretty girl. Why did you have to show up _now?”_


End file.
